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We Must Remain a Nation of Laws
Kyle Rittenhouse was found “Not Guilty” on all counts. There has been a lot of background noise on the events that occurred in Kenosha on August 25, 2020, that resulted in the deaths of two men and the wounding of one.
My personal opinion is that laws are written to provide a consistent process to prosecute, and defend specific actions when someone is charged with a crime. Laws do not prevent someone from committing a crime as much as we would like that to be true. Most criminals commit crimes because they believe they will not be caught.
If Kyle Rittenhouse had asked for my advice about going to Kenosha on August 25, 2020, I would have advised against it. It’s the same advice I would have given to any of you about placing yourself in a situation that you cannot control. I’ve been in those situations as a former police officer. From domestic disputes, traffic stops, working demonstrations, and welfare checks, I was placed in the position of having to react and assess a situation in a matter of seconds in some of those incidents.
That being said the Rittenhouse trial involved a specific action(s) involving a specific statute, specific elements of the statute, and allowable defenses to the statute. Nothing else matters. The jurors reached their decision after examining the facts. This is how the law should work.
The background noise comes from individuals that don’t know the law and have no desire to understand the law. The mob has no conscience, they have desires. Conscience becomes desire, and whim, and whims are enforced by a fist. Mindless violence was tolerated for an entire summer. Kyle Rittenhouse was not responsible for this. Elected officials who abandoned their responsibility to uphold the law by ordering police officers to stand down as their cities were being destroyed are responsible for this.
Published in Law
It is an amazingly statist stance.
He’s effectively arguing a duty to retreat until the cops show up.
And the cops usually are supposed to retreat too, at least in many places.
The cops were a block and a half away. Rittenhouse was retreating to them.
Kyle was a militia of one.
Again, I am misunderstood.
Anyone showing up and acting alone is an idiot and is adding to the chaos. Anyone showing up with an organized group that can, for example, escort a few fire extinguisher carrying fellows, is reducing the chaos. Riots are chaos. You can’t end it with more chaos. You need to end it by restoring order, and that can’t be done individually.
Again, you are saying that people should not defend their property and run away.
You are not being misunderstood, what you are saying is loud and clear.
Young Rittenhouse was not positioned as a result of tactical genius. Winding up alone in a hostile mob comprised almost entirely of semi-professional sociopaths is not the product of careful planning. But once there, that which he had to do to extricate himself was not unlawful or wrong.
I don’t have clear answers to the inherently messy circumstances of trying to defend property with lethal force against morons. Aside from the inherent risk from the violent attackers, the same political forces that inhibit rightful and necessary police action will likely always do what they did here—quickly punish those who oppose the rioters.
Well, it is always easy for someone on the internet to sit back and call someone else a fool.
I never said that at all. If you have property there, kill anyone rioting to destroy it, without question. But if you do not have property there, go as a group that works well together, preferrably with belt fed weapons and mortars if you’ve got them, but don’t go alone. That’s pure stupidity and only adds to the chaos and cannot restore order.
Well, being easy doesn’t make it wrong.